


I want you by my side

by silverxrain



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:05:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3653160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverxrain/pseuds/silverxrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik visits Charles in Westchester three months after stranding him on the beach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I want you by my side

Evening has fallen extraordinarily fast, so much that it throws Charles off balance. He isn't accustomed to that yet.

It's been three months since the beach.

He hasn't felt alone, no, not alone, more hollow, as if something's been scraped out from inside him. He'd always known he and Erik saw things differently, but he'd never thought -

He should have expected things to end this way.

Not in a wheelchair, though. Charles could never have imagined himself in a wheelchair in his twenties.

Now that it's happened, he finds he's surprisingly at ease with it. Charles was never one for the physical side of things. But he hates that now he has to send his students out to do the heavy work. They're just children, Alex and Sean, even Hank. Their burden has been even more increased since they were brought together with the others to form the battalion now known as the X-Men (Charles had to swear up and down it wasn't his idea before anyone would take him seriously after Sean and Alex hearing that).

Sean, Alex and Hank returned to the manor with him. Sean and Alex are continuing to hone their abilities in, under and around the manor, (Charles isn't sure whether they're not just messing about now that Erik isn't around to keep them in line), while Hank is steadily working to perfect the serum that will cure his beastly state. Charles isn't sure whether he approves or not of that, especially considering what it did to him last time, but either way, it is Hank's choice.

The manor is only half as full of life and noise as it was before, Charles thinks. The scraped out feeling in his gut is definitely something to do with the fact that Raven isn't lifting weights in the gym, Moira isn't tapping away on some device from their communications room, Erik isn't leaning against the doorway with another sarcastic comment softened by the warm affection Charles can feel in his mind-

_no, don't think about Erik_

It's too late, Charles is thinking about Erik, and pain lances through him, the familiar phantom of the pain associated with the numbing feeling in his back and the creeping horror of realisation, with gritty sand in the creases of his face, staring at the sky while the two people he cared about most link hands with their enemies and -

Charles _was_ trying not to think about it.

He heaves a sigh and wheels himself over to the chipped desk covered in blueprints and documents and messy notes scrawled on the wooden surface itself. Charles has moved out of the bedroom he had when Erik was here _no don't think about Erik_ , and into a lower one with easier access for his wheelchair, but Moira had brought his desk down for him before she left, as he was strangely attached to it.

Charles runs his fingers over the cool edge. He remembers another day, a day not marked by urgency or growing desperation. Cool autumn. Sunlight in his room. Maybe he's so fond of this desk is because of the time that Erik pushed him up against it and-

 _No_ , stop that at once. Charles puts his head in his hands. It's too early and he's too sober for this kind of mournful regret to hit him yet. He glances behind him. It's dark. Charles has that unbalanced feeling yet again, as if the floor has just been shifted slightly beneath his feet and nobody else felt it.

Okay, it's dark. Time to think about Erik. Erik's sharp face with its foxlike features is a phantom always two steps behind him wherever he goes. Not that he's left the house or even his room much in the three months it's been.

Charles can't help but be bitter, thinking that Erik got the better end of the deal. Erik's body is whole, and he's taken off, with Raven (Charles is only just beginning to realize her true value), and all the rest of the living known mutants. They followed him, and a merry dance he leads them now, bombings in various government buildings, secret service buildings breached, apparently just because they can, random acts of vandalism Charles can trace to the Brotherhood, even if the CIA can't, havoc in the streets (Charles thinks, as he does every time, of Sean's relentless 'Havok in the streets' jokes whenever Alex goes outside. Hank pretends they are funny because it annoys Alex).

Erik is out there, with Shaw's men, Riptide and Azazel, they called themselves, lovely Angel, their first recruit, his Raven, wearing her blue form proudly wherever she goes now, even Emma has apparently been liberated to join them, Erik's first move after leaving him.

 _Emma Frost_. Erik chose Raven, their battalion's defection, he chose Shaw's people and Shaw's way over Charles and the home he had thought they'd made together. Charles had known there were things that had been done to Erik that he could not ever forgive, but Charles hadn't suspected Erik had actually agreed with Shaw, the enemy he was striving to destroy.

It hurt... was all. Erik was running free with the only other known mutants, and he was left alone in their half empty base, with three confused and lonely recruits, and without his sister or the man he had grown to care about more than he knew was safe. To love Erik was to love a half tamed wild creature, one that might take flight or turn on its owners any time. Not that Charles thought of himself as Erik's owner... But perhaps he had seen it that way. Perhaps _Raven_ had seen it that way. Maybe that was why they had left him.

Charles sighs. He's been going over and over this in his head for nearly eight weeks now, wondering constantly why half of all he had had been taken from him.

But he made a promise, the day Moira left. He would move forward. Erik had chosen his path, and Charles would have to put him out of his mind until the day he knew they'd be forced to fight on opposite sides. Charles has a chance to build something right here. A school, a safe haven for young mutants, a base for human-mutant peace negotiations. Charles simply wishes he didn't have to do it alone.

_I want you by my side._

There's a click behind him, yanking him from his thoughts. He wheels himself around just as his window slides up, and a figure dressed in tight fitting black climbs in. Charles readies himself for a psychic attack on the intruder, and then the figure straightens up and pulls off the hat, mashing it into his pocket. It's Erik Lehnsherr.

Charles can't even think. He simply stares, dumbfounded. He might be imagining it. His compulsive obsessing over Erik may have actually summoned a hallucination of the man.

He realizes he's gaping like a fish and shuts his mouth.

"Charles?" Erik takes a step forward into the lamplight, and Charles knows he is not imagining his friend, nor the stricken look on his face.

"Charles, you're..."

"What're you doing here, Erik?" Charles asks, wheeling himself forward. He doesn't think Erik is here to attack him. He doesn't believe he could take it if Erik wants to destroy him now.

"I see the rest of your merry band couldn't make it."

Erik's wearing the helmet. Of course he's wearing the helmet. He knows Charles would have his hooks deep into his mind by now if he could. Charles wouldn't let him leave again if he could.

"We have a safe base," Erik says. His face is a mask of anguish. He's looking at the chair, and Charles suddenly realizes he must not have known that Charles is now crippled for life. Charles recalls the sensitive boy he'd found locked deep inside Erik, how he'd brought him out of hiding, and Charles is glad he can't read the guilt Erik's feeling over him.

"Charles, I didn't know - your legs..."

"The bullet shattered part of my vertebrae," Charles says, more calmly than he is feeling. He graduated from Oxford, of course he has to say 'vertebrae' instead of 'spine'. "Small enough for me to survive, but I won't ever walk again."

"I'm so sorry," he says. "Charles, I never meant for this to happen."

"For what?" he asks. "You didn't mean to leave with Shaw's mutants? You weren't planning all along to pick up where he left off after you killed him?"

Erik looks away.

"What are you doing here, Erik?" Charles repeats.

"I was serious about wanting you with me."

"I was serious about us wanting different things."

"I thought you might change your mind."

"You won _Raven_ , Erik. You took them all, even my sister. And now you're wreaking chaos among the humans the way you always wanted to. What the hell do you need me for?"

Erik fixes him with those eyes like an icy Siberian winter. "You know why, Charles." Charles gives him a long look, trying to say everything with it that he'd normally be feeding directly into Erik's mind. "I've got an idea, why don't you stay with _me_? I've been inside your mind, don't forget. I know you can be capable of good, my friend."

"You also know I can be capable of mass murder."

Charles doesn't quite know when they got so close. Erik is right up in Charles's face, but is still standing as if he might need to take flight any minute. Any of the trainees could burst in here and see him. He's taking a huge risk, actually, coming here when for all he knows, Charles has set a dozen traps. He hasn't, though. He'd never thought Erik would set foot here ever again.

"But you didn't kill them, did you? The humans survived," Charles points out, because the ships had survived and returned their occupants mostly unharmed.

"That only happened because you distracted me," Erik grinds out. "I distracted you by getting shot in the back? Why Erik, if I'd known that would work so well I would have tried that earlier."

" _Don't_ joke about this, Charles," Erik says warningly.

"Come home," Charles says, suddenly filled with weariness and longing. "Bring Raven back, bring all of them here and stay with me and make peace with the humans. Why must you continue to fight them? The ones who wronged you are dead. It's over."

"It will never be over, Charles. But you can't see that, because you just want everyone to be friends, and for us to pretend to be normal, don't you?"

"Not anymore," Charles says. "That's why Raven went with you, isn't it? I should've - I could've done things differently. Maybe she would have stayed. Maybe you wouldn't have..."

"It's like you said, we want different things," Erik says, leaning against the window frame. "Perhaps we were just fated to be enemies. This was always how it was going to end."

"But it doesn't have to be." Charles looks up at him with earnest blue eyes. Erik remembers another day with the wet sand underneath his knees and his friend's limp body in his arms and those impossibly blue eyes looking up at him with a kind of despairing resignation and longing.

"I have to put everything before the cause, Charles."

"So do I. I _am_. This is me, putting everything before the cause. It's not in our natures to give up what we fight for. Oh Erik why can't you see that you have it in you to be better?"

"I killed Shaw. And you felt every second of it. Tell me, am I not a murderer?"

_forgive me Charles. tell me I can be forgiven_

Charles can't read his mind, but Erik knows that Charles would. Charles would tell him he was good until Erik killed him with his bare hands.

But he is not.

"I accepted I was broken a long time ago. But I can still do something worthwhile. Lead mutants to their rightful place in the world."

"Which is where? On top of a mountain of human bodies?"

"Exactly," Erik says. Maybe Charles will stop at that. But Charles never gives in. He only concludes a draw for now. Erik knows this from numerous chess matches. Charles never gives in, only concedes the match in the short term.

"So we are enemies," Charles says, and he sounds sad. "But you know..."

He doesn't finish his sentence and Erik knows he won't so he doesn't ask. He says, "I'm going to go now."

"All right," Charles says, looking defeated.

Xavier was his heart and his lenient moral compass. Erik will be freer without either. He's a leader now. Charles is just a weakness. A weakness he should be glad has been severed from his life for good.

Erik pulls cold and icy stillness over himself like it's a comforter. He grew up broken, into a man, broken, into a killer, a weapon, but his humanity, broken. It seems he's better off without it.

He faces the window for freezing blasts of winter wind in his face. He sucks them down in a breath. Puts a boot on the windowsill, curls his fingers around the edge to climb outside.

"You're not really thinking of keeping the cape, are you?" Charles asks weakly behind him. "It's far too silly."

And Erik has turned around and is advancing on Charles because he can't let go of this completely, never could. He kneels down in front of his friend's chair, seizes his face in his hands and kisses him hard.

Charles's mouth is soft and open and welcoming just like he remembers. Charles always seemed surprised but pleased when Erik initiated kissing. Erik can tell by the desperation Charles's mouth presses against his that he knows this will be the last kiss for a long time, maybe forever. Erik doesn't want to forget this one.

Erik pulls back, and he's breathless, and Charles's plush lips are swollen and bruised. Erik kissed him so hard he can still feel it on his own lips, and Charles is staring at him like he's the answer to everything he's asked for.

"I love you," Erik says, because he doesn't think he's ever told Charles that before, and Charles says, "I know." Erik is glad Charles understands, because he wants him to understand that, and he does. Charles has told him that before.

 _I love you_ , Charles whispers into his ear, curled tight against Erik's side in the bed that's too warm to ever consider leaving, and the room is bright with sunlight because Charles always forgets to close the curtains before Erik presses him down into the bed at night. _You don't have to say it back, you just have to know that, Erik_. Erik almost does, because the only reason he won't say it is because he learnt from Shaw never to give his heart to anything and some lessons are ingrained too deeply in Erik to be anything other than a part of him.

"Charles, forgive me," Erik says. "I already have," Charles says softly. "I always will. I don't know how not to."

"Then forgive me for what I'm going to do."

"You know I can't do that, love." Charles cups his face in his hands. "That's why we're apart."

Erik's vision is kind of blurry with unshed tears but he chokes out, "Okay."

"You should go now," Charles says gently disengaging Erik's hands from where they're fisted in his shirt. "Go home to Raven and the others. You have to take good care of my sister, you know that, right?"

"I promise," Erik says, not moving his eyes from Charles's face. They stay like that for a beat.

"We might have to be enemies but I'll still feel the same about you," Charles says, breaking the silence.

Erik will not admit to himself that that was what he'd wanted to hear, although Charles might have guessed.

Erik Lehnsherr was supposed to be made of stone, a weapon with broken humanity. But he has inadvertently made Charles his heart, and he can't change it back. He doesn't know how.

Erik somehow manages to tear himself away from Charles. He gets onto the window, and Charles says, "You could just use the front door."

Erik twists to look back at him, and winks. "Your tricks don't work on me, darling."

"Dream on," Charles tells him, and Erik grins, raising an answering smirk. Maybe, just maybe, life like this can be tolerable. Eternal coexistence, separate, but then Erik is wiser than he was three months ago. They can never stand on the same side of the line again.

It's many years before Erik discovers he's wrong about that, too.

But by then he's already learned and relearned, multiple times, that there is no yin without a yang and there never was a Magneto without Professor X.


End file.
